DRC- Public health officials in Africa have raised caution following the revelation by the Democratic Republic of Congo Minister for Health who raised an alert over a mystery flu-like disease that has in recent weeks killed dozens of people.
The Head of Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Jean Kaseya told journalists yesterday that more details about the disease should be known in the next 48 hours as experts receive results from laboratory samples of infected people.
Dr Kaseya said, “First diagnostics are leading us to think it is a respiratory disease, but we need to wait for the laboratory results, because there are many things that are still unknown about the disease including whether it is infectious and how it is transmitted”.
The Democratic Republic of Congo Minister for Health Dr Roger Kamba said that authorities have so far confirmed 71 deaths, including 27 people who died in hospitals and 44 in the community in the Southern Kwango Province and the victims at the hospitals, 10 of them died due to lack of blood transfusion and 17 because of respiratory problems.
“The Congolese government is on general alert regarding this disease,” Minister Kamba said, without providing more details.
The deaths were recorded between November 10th and 25th in the Panzi Health Zone of Kwango Province where around 380 cases have been recorded and half of which were children under the age of 5.
The Africa Centre for Disease Control is reported to have recorded slightly different numbers, with 376 cases and 79 deaths, but Dr Kaseya said that the discrepancy was caused by problems with surveillance and case definition.
Minister Kamba said that authorities have said that symptoms include fever, headache, cough and anemia and Epidemiological experts are in the region to take samples and investigate the disease.
It is reported that the Panzi Health Zone, located around 700 kilometers from the capital, Kinshasa, is a remote area of the Kwango Province, making it hard to reach and access.
The Head of the National Institute for Public Health, Dieudonne Mwamba, the epidemiological experts took two days to arrive in the area, but due to lack of testing capacity, samples had to be taken to Kikwit, more than 500 kilometers away.
“The health system is quite weak in our rural areas, but for certain types of care, the ministry has all the provisions, and we are waiting for the first results of the sample analysis to properly calibrate things,” Dr Kaseya said.
Mwamba said that Panzi was already a “fragile” zone, with 40% of its residents experiencing malnutrition and was also hit by an epidemic of typhoid fever two years ago, and there is currently a resurgence of seasonal flu across the country so there is need to take into account all this as context.
A Panzi resident, Claude Niongo, said his wife and 7-year-old daughter died from the disease.
Mwamba said that they do not know the cause, but only noticed high fevers, vomiting and then death and now, the authorities are talking about an epidemic, but in the meantime, there is a problem of lack care people are dying.
Additional Reporting by Associated Press .
